Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

I've been a uverse customer fro about 4 years and very happy....until now. Two weeks ago, my original residential gateway began to have issues with dropping the tv signal. ATT sent out a new residential gateway - a 2Wire 3801HGV. the new unit works great for TV and ethernet connected devices. Major issues with dropped wireless since this was installed. I'e done research all over the internet and LOTs of other people seem to have been experiencing these same issues, with no real long term solution. Here's what I know, from the past week's experience. If anyone has a good solution, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!

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Issue

2Wire router drops wireless connectivity intermittently

What We Know

When wireless connectivity is dropped, the wireless network itself disappears

One of the things which will trigger a loss of the network and connectivity is attempting to connect or add an additional wireless device

The issue appears to have something to do with wireless channel assignment – when wireless connectivity is lost and the network disappears, if you look on the router’s settings page, under wireless, at times the following has occurred:

The channel setting changes from AUTO to Manual

The channel may change to 0

Wireless connectivity and the wireless network can be at least temporarily returned to functionality by accessing the Uverse 2Wire Router’s settings page, log in, check to ensure the channel settings are indeed in AUTO and the channel assignment is NOT 0, then rescan and save.

Even if the ‘correct’ settings are appearing on the router’s settings page, what you’re seeing may not be valid.

To regain connectivity and re-establish the wireless network, you HAVE to select the channel setting and set it as AUTO and rescan the channel assignments, then SAVE.

At this time, it appears the wireless network may remain somewhat stable until an additional new device attempts to connect, at which point the network and connectivity will disappear

Pulling the plug on the router may temporarily resolve the problem, but it will re-occur

Conjecture

It appears that the 2Wire residential gateway settings related to wireless channel assignments are changing at times, even though those changes may not be reflected on the settings page.

ATT Support

Been on the phone with the tech support you pay for twice – no joy

Had one tech out to the house – he replaced the residential gateway, problem continues to exist

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

It sounds like your having wireless interference issues. Download inSSIDer here. Run it and find the least conjested channel and manually configure the RG to that channel (not auto). For instance the least congested channel at my house is 8. I have my RG set to only use channel 8.

Test again and see if that helps improve the dropping.

"If you find this post helpful and it solved your issue please mark it as a solution. This will help other forum members locate it and will also let everyone know that it corrected your problem. If they have the same issue they will know how to solve theirs"

*The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

No joy. I just got home, tried your suggestions, and experienced the same issue. As soon as a device tried to join the wifi network, wifi disconnected and the network disappeared and could not be found when scanned. Looked at the router settings and sure enough, the wireless channel had changed, on its own, to 0, even though the channel was manually assigned to 11 9and saved). Had to change the channel setting back to 11, re-save, then scan again, and the wifi channel and connectivity returned. At least I know how to trigger the failure. Now if we could just figure out how to fix it. Any help or suggestions are most welcome. thx!

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

What are you doing when you say "had to scan again"? Are you clicking the "rescan" button on the wireless page in the RG or something on the wireless device you are trying to join?

All I did was go to the wireless page in the RG, set the channel to 8, went to the bottom of the page and clicked save.

"If you find this post helpful and it solved your issue please mark it as a solution. This will help other forum members locate it and will also let everyone know that it corrected your problem. If they have the same issue they will know how to solve theirs"

*The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

hitting the rescan on the wireless page. Honestly, I tried various channels and had NO luck with correcting the issue. I don't know if it is correctable, I believe it's some sort of software issue, particularly after reading how many people are experiencing the very same issue. I've carefully looked at all my ip addresses, to ensure there's no conflict, and have tried just about everything I can think of. Right now, I do have a wireless network, but if I try to connect any devices not already connected to it, the wireless network will disappear and I have to go through the whole procedure listed above to get it back.

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

Just set the channel you want and hit save at the bottom. Don't hit the "rescan" button. That's used if your set to auto and want the RG to scan and find a channel for you.

"If you find this post helpful and it solved your issue please mark it as a solution. This will help other forum members locate it and will also let everyone know that it corrected your problem. If they have the same issue they will know how to solve theirs"

*The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

one addition.....when you manually assign a wireless channel, the router begins broadcasting on two channels - the one you assigned and channel 11. Fairly weird. That might explain the conflict which is happening

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

That's not normal.......broadcasting on 2 channels!! No wonder everything is confused. I would say you have a bad RG even though it's been changed.You don't have any other type of routers or wireless access points on your network do you? If it's only the RG, then when the tech shows up later this week show him using inSSIDer that the RG is transmitting on 2 channels, 11 and which ever one you manually set. He should understand from there.

Just thinking out loud...set your channel you want to use, then save. Reboot the RG and see if it's still transmitting on 2 channels. I also found some posts on this issue when I googled it and some say the fix was to drop the wireless power from 10 to 8? All that had the problems were running on the 3801. Several reported that with the setting on 8 their issues cleared up?

"If you find this post helpful and it solved your issue please mark it as a solution. This will help other forum members locate it and will also let everyone know that it corrected your problem. If they have the same issue they will know how to solve theirs"

*The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

That's a great suggestion. When I get home tonight I'll give that a try. How do you change the power setting, I haven't seen that function / control setting in the router settings page as yet. Thanks very much for the help and advice, I really appreciate it. I'll let you know how your new suggestions work out tonight. thx!

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

Just thought of one more thing about the two wireless channels......Are you using any wireless set top boxes? Since I don't have one I can prove or disprove whether the wireless STB uses a different channel for it's use. I know it has it's own "N" wireless access point that plugs into the RG. Maybe that's why your seeing 2 channels? If you have a wireless STB you could unplug the WAP from the RG along with any power to the WAP and run a test to see if that's what your seeing. It shouldn't matter that you have a wireless STB if you do though. They should function together.

I would still try the static wireless channel setting in the RG then re-boot it and see what you get before doing anything else.

Sorry but at this point I'm just throwing things out there to try to figure out why your seeing the behavior you are.

"If you find this post helpful and it solved your issue please mark it as a solution. This will help other forum members locate it and will also let everyone know that it corrected your problem. If they have the same issue they will know how to solve theirs"

*The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

Re: Uverse Wireless Issues / 2Wire 3801HGV Residential Gateway

You change the power level on the same page as you change the channel number on. It's at the bottom under Advanced Settings > Power Setting. Used to be 1 thru 10 but now it's in mW's with 400 being the highest (10) and 25 behind the lowest or 1 so 8 would be 300.

"If you find this post helpful and it solved your issue please mark it as a solution. This will help other forum members locate it and will also let everyone know that it corrected your problem. If they have the same issue they will know how to solve theirs"

*The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.